This past Saturday, the No. 5 UChicago men’s tennis team beat No. 18 Gustavus Adolphus 7–2. Part of the score came from UChicago’s complete sweep of singles matches, their seventh of this season. This game also served as the last regular season match for the Men’s Tennis squad as they get set for postseason play. The UAA Championships are this upcoming weekend in Florida, followed by the NCAA Championships later in May.
The Gusties jumped out to an early lead by winning two of the three doubles match-ups. UChicago’s sole win came from the duo of first-year Charlie Pei and second-year Peter Leung. Although the UChicago team was down early, the squad won in all of its single match-ups, giving it the advantage and an easy victory by a final score of 7-2. Three of the singles matches went into three sets and were won by second-year Nicolas Chua in the first place, second-year David Liu in the second, and third-year Sven Kranz in the fourth.
Chua commented on how the seven-match singles sweep contributed to the wins and on what this means for the Maroons’ upcoming postseason play:
“I think we have the confidence to sweep singles against every team, and it’s just a matter of executing day-to-day. As the score shows, a lot of the matches were close, but we were able to be just a little tougher than they were across the board, and that’s why we took all the matches. We’re going to need to improve even more if we want to have the same success at UAAs and NCAAs.”
Chua also backtracked to a loss against then–No. 5 Case Western and win against No. 13 Wash U as contributing to the win against Gustavus Adolphus:
“I definitely think some of our tough matches against Case and Wash U helped us this weekend. It goes back to the toughness I mentioned before because we rarely play as well as we are capable, but what’s most important is winning when you aren’t playing well. Hopefully, we play better this coming weekend, and we compete a little harder.”
The men’s tennis team will travel to Florida for the UAA Championships playing their quarterfinal match against Rochester at 8 a.m. on Thursday, April 21. If the team advances, the semifinals are set for Friday afternoon, with the championship game on Saturday morning.
